Motivations, barriers, and opportunities: multifunctional green infrastructure and urban resilience in Midwestern US cities

The implementation of green infrastructure (GI) can foster urban resilience to climate change; however, its implementation is often narrowly framed around stormwater management. Through a survey of municipal planners in mid-sized cities across the Midwestern US, we examined how planners perceive and utilize GI in response to local climate threats. We find planners are more likely to identify decreasing flooding as a motivation for developing GI regulations when their concern about climate change-induced flooding is high. However, this relationship does not extend to other climate change concerns and associated motivations, indicating a need to increase awareness of the multifunctionality of GI. This disconnect suggests that this multifunctional potential remains unrealized in practice. Our findings highlight the need to broaden institutional awareness of GI’s adaptive capacity and suggest opportunities for more integrated planning approaches that align climate concerns with the full range of its benefits.